Friday, 17 November 2006

Black Duck Welcomes Sun's Decision to Open Source Java

Black Duck, the provider of software compliance management solutions, has given the thumbs up signal to Sun Microsystems’ decision to open source Java. Many organisations are using open source code to develop software, and the Sun announcement means that any company using Java will need to understand the implications of the licensing terms of the open source General Public License (GPL) and the impact on software that is developed with Java, the company said.

Black Duck Software CEO Douglas Levin said, "Sun’s announcement regarding Java is a boon to the open source community. It’s unprecedented for a platform as integral to computing as Java to make such a licensing change. Companies need to understand its impact on many fronts. At the most elemental level, though, the licensing change affects the way Java can be used and deployed."

Last year at JavaONE Conference, Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun and Rich Green, the Executive Vice President, committed to releasing Java SE (Standard Edition) under an Open Source license. Since then, Sun has been slowly edging towards what has been a much-awaited eventuality. Taking this initiative further, Sun had announced the open sourcing of more components of the Java platform. The components that are being released are the Java C Compiler, HotSpot VM (Virtual Machine), and the Java Helpdesk.

Thus the community will now be able to download, use and build on an open source implementation of these platform components.